Reviews

Daniel Handler back with a Snicket

28Oct.

One of the great pseudonyms in children's literature is Lemony Snicket, the "author" of the ground-breaking A Series of Unfortunate Events
series. The branchild of Snicket is Daniel Handler, who has been
generating lots of publicity for the next four books related to
Snicket. The first, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, was released recently by Little, Brown. USA Today
offers an interesting profile of Handler, quoting no less than Dave
Eggers, a good friend. "Daniel is a species of writer I just didn't
know until I met him, an actual larger-than-life personality, a real
raconteur. He is just as funny and quick and erudite in person as
he is on the page... Daniel's the real deal. He reads everything,
he has read everything." He hangs out with a lot of writers, and
apparently is trying to revive the cocktail party.

National Book Awards
finalists ...

10Oct.

The National Book Awards finalists for 2012 have
been announced. We'll have to wait until November 14 for the winners to
be announced at a big gala event in New York. I was fortunate enough to
attend one year, and was happy to snag some of the nominated books that
were given as gifts.

In fiction, the finalists are:

Junot Díaz, This
Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin
Group USA, Inc.)

Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
(McSweeney's Books)

Louise Erdrich, The Round House
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of
Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt)

Based
on the number of gushing reviews, it's tempting to make Boo
the
favorite. Scholarly authors might favor Applebaum. Biographers will
likely give Caro the nod. I'm going to go with Shadid, one of the
greatest ever foreign correspondents.

JK Rowling starts a row in
home town

5Oct.

J.K. Rowling has made headlines around the world for the
fast commerical success of her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, which
sits atop several best-seller lists. The juiciest story in all this is
the response the book has received back in her home
town, Tutshill,
located in Gloucestershire, overlooking both the Rivers Wye
and Severn. She spent her early years in this village and has
not
been shy about the fact that she has drawn on her experiences here to
produce her latest novel. The portryal of the town folks in her
fictional village of Pagford was anything but flattering in her
dark tale of local folks vying for power in the wake of
councilman's death. Some people are starting to gripe. "The general
consensus in these parts is that Ms. Rowling has traded Hogwarts for
hogwash," notes The
Daily Mail, as she "has
painted the residents of make-believe Pagford as a bunch of
heartless racists with zero compassion for the downtrodden no-hopers on
that local housing estate."
One local, a friend of the author's father no less, was quoted: "It
sounds like nonsense. I suppose she’s got a bit of a chip on
her
shoulder. This has always been a happy area."

It will be
interesting to see how locals react when they see her. And see her they
might, as she has apparently purchased a house in the area recently.
I'd love to read more about this.

And by way of
recommendation, for a terrifically moving look at what happens when a
writer trashes his hometown and then is forced to return home to face
the consequences, check out The
Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper.

Let's celebrate Banned
Books Week

28 Sept.

I didn't know much about Banned
Books Week
until just recently. I am pleased to note that it is taking place Sept.
30–Oct. 6. This year's version just happens to be the 30th
anniversary. That's quite a milestone. Back in 19892, Banned Books Week
was launched in 1982 by a group of sponsors that now include the
American Booksellers Association, the American Library
Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and a host
of others in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to
books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have
been challenged since 1982. According to the American Library
Association, there were 326 challenges reported to its Office
of
Intellectual Freedom in 2011. Many more go unreported.

To
Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper LeeReasons: offensive language; racism

Michael Chabon's latest
novel

22Sept.

Is there anyway to top a novel like The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay, which ranks as one my all-time
favorites? Michael Chabon has certainly given it a shot with The Yiddish Policemen's Union
and Gentlmen of the Road.
Both novels were critically acclaimed, though both perhaps fell short
of the lofty heights of his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. His
latest novel is Telegraph
Avenue, which USA Today describes as
"a moving, sprawling, modern-day tale that uses the improvisational
shifts and rhythms of jazz and soul to tell the story of two couples,
one black, one white, and the distressed, interracial community they
call home." Though the novel is set in Oakland, one reviewer sees a lot of Dublin.

You
have to give Chabon a lot of credit for delving into the tricky terrain
of race relations. Trying to give voice to characters of different
races is inherently fraught with pitfalls. It would be all too
easy to lapse into inauthenticity, with unintended
comical results.

Michael Ennis' long road to
third novel

18Sept.

The premise sounds like an obvious winner, one that editors
would
be willing to pay handsomely for — Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da
Vinci, the brightest stars of the Renaissance, work
together to solve a string of murders. While researching the novel,
"Ennis discovered that Machiavelli and Leonardo crossed paths in the
same small Italian city at the same time these events were taking
place. That's when Ennis remembered that Leonardo had famously
dissected corpses. 'I went: Oh! He could be a Renaissance forensic
pathologist!' With Leonardo's forensics expertise and Machiavelli's
talents as a profiler, Ennis now had a crime-fighting team with a
contemporary edge — a kind of Renaissance CSI," notes NPR.

For all his novel's appeal, Ennis had trouble selling
it. His agent sent it out in two distinct rounds with no luck,
even after he cut the number of pages by half. So what to do?
He
ended up self-publishing, and sending copies directly to booksellers,
many of whom were quite enthusiastic about it. He ended up with
a deal for more than six figures with
Doubleday.

J.K. Rowling writes a novel
for adults

23August

Plenty of adults ended up reading the Harry Potter novels.
Many
read them initially to make sure the series was okay for their
kids--and ended up getting hooked. They yearned for each
successive novel and mourned when it all ended. Their long
wait is
now over!

The author is back, with a novel aimed at grown ups.

More than 2 million copies of her hardback Casual Vacancy will
land at bookstores in the United States in late September, just as the
digital version hits the Internet. The novel is a far cry from
Hogwarts. Rowling's first adult novel is decidely
this-worldy, an
exploration of an election held after a member of a parish
council dies. The publisher, Little, Brown, calls it Dickensian for "the
humanity, the humor, the social concerns, the intensely real
characters."

Some
things never change, however. The author has always prized secrecy, and
this launch was no different. There were no advanced reader copies, no
review copies, nothing, which at this point probably makes sense from a
marketing perspective. Interest will likely be exceedingly high. But
there are no market guarantees, not even for Rowling. Now, had she
written something in the realm of magical fantasy for adults, perhaps
the pundits would have written that success was inevitably. But that's
not what's happening, and it will be interesting to see the
book fares. I would love to read the book, as my perspective
would
be almost unique, given that I have yet to read a Potter novel, unlike
my daughters.

Molly Ringwald, now a
novelist

20August

For people of a certain age, the mention of Molly Ringwald
conjures up fond memories of movies that once meant so much so long
ago. The Breakfast Club,
Pretty in Pink,
really all her movies have long lapsed into cultural artifacts, markers
of the early 1980s. But who can forget them. They certainly made it
hard for Ringwald to move to the next phase of her life, as people
always saw her as the quintessential teen-angst princess. But she has
definitely moved on. She has just published a novel, When It Happens to You,
all about Phillip and Greta, locked in a doomed marriage. In a Q and A with Arts Beat, she
says, "I have always been drawn to writing fiction and have done it for
as long as I can remember, dating back to grade school, but I probably
started writing in earnest in my late teens. Both writing and acting
require an ability to understand character — and then recreate it. I
also tend to 'act' the characters I’m writing to see if they resonate
with me, if the dialogue sounds real."

Gillian Flynn's novel at
No. 1

12August

There have been many times when I have finished a novel and
wondered why it wasn't on the best seller lists. I get that we all have
our literary tastes and genre preferences. And yet some novels
are
so obviously good (in my humble opinion), you do wish that more people
had discovered them. Inevitably, I'm left to wonder if there were any
marketing issues. And then there are novels that are so good that you
are gratified when they make the lists, as if to confirm your
opinion. I mention all this in light of the ascension of Gone Girl
to No. 1 on the New
York Times hardback list. I admit I have not
read it. But when I read Sharp
Objects I did think it had commercial success written all
over it. And when I get around to reading Gone Girl, I am
sure I will feel that she richly deserves her recent
success.

Robert Goolrick's second
novel soars

12June

Robert Goolrick
has lived quite life. For much of his adult years, the native of
Lexington, VA, toiled in New York in the advertising industry, until
he was fired when he was 53, ending a string of
nearly 30
years. His fall was rather epic, as he ended up on welfare and in
Alcoholics Anonymous--a "tortured life," he calls it in a very interesting profile in USA Today.
He ended up moving back to his hometown to start over, eventually
writing his way back to his sense. His first novel A Reliable Wife
(2009) became a book club favorite and made several best seller lists.
His second novel, Heading
Out to Wonderful,
has just been released. So far, the reviews have been strong for the
tale of doomed love "based on a true story he was told long
ago
while visiting a Greek isle, a tale that stayed with him for 25 years.
It involves a small-town love affair gone terribly wrong." Goolrick
"transported the Greek characters to rural Virginia and made the
youngest, a boy named Sam, the narrator. Sixty years later, Sam tells
the story of an enigmatic stranger, Charlie Beale, who arrives in town
and falls in obsessive love with another man's teenage bride, Sylvan
Glass."

Gillian Flynn returns with
a bang

5June

Gillian Flynn's Sharp
Object
was hailed as a significant debut back in 2007, one that heralded an
amazing talent in commercial-literary fiction. The book was
indeed
mesmerizing, as thrilling as it was profound. Flynn, the
former
critic for Entertainment
Weekly, proved that she was no flash in the pan with her
second novel, Dark
Places, published in 2010. Her finest work, judging by the
plentiful reviews, just might be her third novel, Gone Girl, published
recently by Crown. It's already a darling of the critics, who are way
over the moon for it. A flavor: "But the brilliance of Gone Girl
is the way in which it both embraces and upends the familiar
“disappearing spouse” trope while at the same time allowing both
partners in this marriage to wax philosophical about issues of identity
and intimacy as well as the ways in which pop culture informs our
behavior and emotional responses. It’s simply fantastic: terrifying,
darkly funny and at times moving. The minute I finished it I wanted to
start it all over again," from a
review in the Washington
Post. Here's some thoughts by Flynn herself in an interesting interview.

Apple is not going quietly
into the night

24May

Back in the heyday of the dot.com era, a common cliché held
that
"the Internet changes everything." At the time, the words rang true, as
companies were just starting to confront the radical new medium. Books
publishers were in some ways terrified. They watched in horror as the
music industry suffered the loss of billions of dollars due to
peer-to-peer networks. In other ways, however, they were confident,
perhaps overconfident. Many executives believed that the buying public
would never hold an e-book with the same respect as they held a "real"
book. In this view, the e-book movement wouldn't amount to much. For
many years, this view seemed right on. But then along came Amazon with
a game-changing e-reader that proved to be the difference.

Soon
enough, the generic fear of the Internet was replaced by a quite
specific fear of one company, which adroitly built a monopoly in online
book sales--to the detriment of the traditional industry, which argued
that Amazon was literally devaluing their product. When it comes to
anti-trust, the Internet no doubt changed much. Amazon was hardly a
conventional monopolist, as it sought to keep prices of books at
rock-bottom, and consumers generally applauded as authors sneered.
Apple wanted to lose money on books--to the horror of the industry--so
it could make money on Kindles.

Jeff Bezos was shrewd no
doubt. But so was Steve Jobs, who presented himself as an avenging
angel to the book industry. Thanks to Apple, Amazon was cowed. Jeff
Bezos was humbled--and forced to accept another sales platform on equal
terms, not to mention another sales model. The agency model, in which
publishes set their end prices and give a cut to the distributor, now
reigns. The Amazon monopoly—and its detested wholesale model--was
smashed.

But at what cost?

The Justice
Department waded into the war--people have long suggested that Amazon
helped pave the way--and filed an anti-trust suit against Apple and the
big publishers. It charged that the anti-Amazon crowd, led by Apple,
colluded to raise prices. News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, CBS
Corp's Simon & Schuster and Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group
settled, but Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck's Macmillan and
Pearson's Penguin Group have decided to fight. The big news today was
that Apple will join them. The technology giant filed a scathing
rebuttal to the charges in federal court in Manhattan. "At the time
Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten
eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly
absolute," Apple wrote, as noted by ars technica. "Apple’s entry
spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of
offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading
experience." Another quote: “Without Apple’s entry, eBook distribution
would essentially be ceded to a single distributor (Amazon), who would
then possess virtually unlimited power in the eBook business… . Apple
provided all publishers, large or small, similar opportunities to
utilize Apple as an agent to sell eBooks directly to consumers through
the iBookstore on non-discriminatory
terms."

I hope
this case makes it to court. The arguments will be fascinating. At this
point, the government seems to be buying into pre-Internet notions of
monopoly. Apple will mount that argument with passion. In the end, the
question boils down to whether the public would have been better off
with a monopoly that sells books at cut-rate prices or a duopoly that
sells books at higher prices.

Bruce DeSilva's
back

18May

Bruce DeSilva spent 40 years as a print journalist--and it
shows. His debut novel, the well-received Rogue Island,
introduced journalist Liam Mulligan, a whizened metro reporter for the
fictional Providence
Dispatch. DeSilva was once a reporter for The Providence Journal,
though he now resides in New Jersey, and he
well remembers
the terrain. DeSiliva knows his beat so to speak, making Rhode
Island a fascinating setting for a crime novel.

Rogue Island an
Edgar Award and a Macavity Award for best first novel and was a
finalist for the Shamus, Anthony and Barry Awards. All of which
has paved the way for his second novel, Cliff Walk, recently
published by Forge Books. The early reviews are strong. "Look
for this one to garner more award nominations," says Publishers Weekly.

I look forward to reading it.

RIP, Maurice
Sendak

8May

He touched a lot of lives. And will do so for many years to
come.
Few writers put their stamp on American culture the way Maurice Sendak
did. In the publishing industry, he'll be remembered as a children's
book author extraordinaire. Perhaps no other man has ever won
a Caldecott Medal, a National Book Award, the Laura Ingalls
Wilder
Awards and a National Medal of Arts in addition to the Hans Christian
Andersen Medal. I'll leave it up to you to Google for more on his
passing at the age of 83, ever so quietly at his home in Connecticut.
I'll leave you with just two tributes. One allows you to hear the
man's engaging voice, a born storyteller to be sure. The
other
presents Where
the Wild Things are in a very modern format.
Quite interesting. I'm sure I'd love the movie as well if I
were
to ever get around to watching. But the true classic is the book.

The best ever
opening lines in fiction

4May

Do you have a favorite opening line? If you're like me,
you've got
a fascination with the first few sentences of novels.
Most
writers do. Indeed, when this site was young, we offered
a feature that highlighted the first lines from hot novels. If
I
recall, the first to be featured was Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine.

I'm happy to note that The
Observer has come up with an interactive feature entitled,
"The 10 best first lines in fiction." You'll probably quibble with the
list a bit, but it's fun to click through.

The anointed best first line ever comes from Ulysses:
"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl
of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." I personally
would have given the top spot to Pride and Prejudice, which
came in second for its classic: "It is a truth universally
acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must
be in want of a wife." Most of the "winners" are classics or
at
least non-contemporaneous except for one: Donna Tartt's The Secret History,
which opens with a line that I remember well: "The snow in the
mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before
we came to understand the gravity of our situation." Which makes me
want to read the novel for a third time.

It occurs to me that someone ought to do a list of the 10 best closing
lines in fiction. I immediately thought of The Dead:
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through
the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end,
upon all the living and the dead."

Jonathan Tropper coming to
little screen

3May

Jonathan Tropper
ranks as one of the foremost commercial fiction writers never to have
made it to the big screen. Which is too bad. His novels are wonderfully
cinematic, created it seems with the screen in mind. After reading one
of his novels--The Book
of Joe remains my favorite--you'll be tempted to play the
who-should-play-whom-in-the-movie game.

I've
been reading for years that this-or-that novel of his had been optioned
or was soon to be in production. So far, nothing has panned
out.
The dry spell may soon end, however. Rock of Ages director
Adam
Shankman is apparently negotiating with Warner Bros. to bring This Is Where I Leave You,
which was released in 2009 to much ado, to the big
screen.

Tropper
will also be debuting on the little screen
soon. Cinemax has
started production in Charlotte, N.C., on "Banshee", an
action
series written by Tropper and fellow writer David Schickler.
Tropper also co-executive produced. Scheduled for 10 episodes,
the
show is expected to appear next year. The series
features Antony Starr as Lucas Hood, an ex-con who assumes the
identity of a sheriff to continue his life of crime. This
doesn't
sound like vintage Tropper, but you can bet that it will be well
written.

A Book Offer You Can't
Refuse

27April

Mario Gianluigi Puzo, the perfect name for his literary
endeavors, just wanted to make some money when he published The Godfather
in 1969. He had no intention of penning a novel
destined to
become the Ur novel of the mob genre, the mother of all those
cliches. By the time the classic film was released in 1972, Puzo was
already rich.

Interestingly, he never published sequels to The Godfather. But
he wrote the screenplays for both The
Godfather Part II and The
Godfather Part III,
collaborating with Francis Ford Coppola. He did continue to
write
about the Mob, however. He spent the last 3 years of his life writing Omerta, which was
released soon afterhis
death of heart failure in 1999. Roughly two years later, his last
novel, The
Family, was published; it was completed by his long-time
companion Carol Gino.

Fortunately, the franchise never died. The Puzo family authorized two
sequels to The
Godfather. The Godfather Returns (2004) and The Godfather's Revenge (2006)
were both authored to much fanfare by Mark Winegardner,
director
of the creative writing program at Florida State University. The next
novel will be a prequel, The
Family Corleone, which was written by Ed Falco, who runs
the creative writing program at Virginia Tech. He's the uncle of Edie
Falco, of The Sopranos
fame.

The
book is due May 8. One early review calls it "a worthy addition to the
lurid world of the Five Families, if not quite an offer you can’t
refuse."

Grand Central is doing what it can to generate
some pre-release buzz. Toward that end, we offer a "trailer" (via Entertainment Weekly)
that spoofs the genre. Very funny!

Harlan Coben's streak continues

24April

Must be nice: Harlan Coben's latest novel debuted at No. 1
on the New York Times
best-seller list. That marks the fifth straight time that has happened,
"but it never gets old," he tells an interviewer. Say what you
will about him, he's got his method, and his method works. While I have
yet to read Stay Close,
I know from past reading that it will deliver some very ornate twists
and turns and some reliably interesting, if not necessarily deep,
characters, set in the real America known as the New
Jersey suburbs. I was hardly surprised to read the reviews,
which have been as strong as usual. Coben surely ranks as one of
America's most reliable thriller writers, and one of the hardest
working. Who can forget that memorable profile in The Atlantic,
which concluded that his "work ethic, gift for plot twists, obsession
with sales numbers, and careful brand management have made him a
blockbuster novelist who earns millions of dollars per book. What it
takes to succeed as a thriller writer—even when the literary
establishment doesn’t acknowledge your existence." We are
certainly grateful for his gifts. And we would welcome the opportunity
to provide a more formal review soon.

The Revelations of
Elaine Pagels

15April

Elaine Pagels has inspired some great,
best-selling novelists. The list includes no less than Jodi
Picoult (Change of Heart)
and Dan Brown (The Da
Vinco Code).
No doubt there are many others, including many who did not ever grace
the best-seller lists. I am thinking in particular of Tucker Malarkey,
whose Resurrection
is all about the historic discovery of the gnostic gospels of Nag
Hammadi. It garnered some rave reviews, though it never made a big
splash commercially. I bring all this up to note that Pagels has
published a new book, Revelations,
which is about the New Testament book of Revelation. It's been widely
reviewed. The New York
Timessays it
"details how Revelation and other apocalyptic writings have frequently
urged fear and hatred of ruling powers, if not so often armed revolt."
Perhaps it will inspire another round of commercial fiction.

The Hunger Games vs.
Harry Potter

13Mar

AM I THE ONLY ONE who hasn't read The Hunger Games?
It sure seems that way. In my household, everyone old enough has
devoured the entire Suzanne Collins trilogy. They can barely wait for
the movie; they've been planning the logistics for days. At
work,
I am amazed by how many of my colleagues have read them. The series has
blessedly transcended the YA label in a way matched only by the Harry
Potter series.

The movie is shaping up to be quite an event.
The estimates for the opening weekend box office take have risen to the
$100 million to $120 million, which puts it in rare company. The
all-time record of course is held by Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows Part 2, which racked up nearly $170 million last
July. The Hunger Games
has a realistic shot at cracking the top eight, the position held by Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows Part 1, which hauled in $125 million in November
2010. We'll keep you posted.

Whether
the movie exceeds the final Harry Potter installments really doesn't
matter. This is an unabashed phenomena. Book sales are going to the
moon. The stars have definitely aligned.

Which means I perhaps ought to read it.

In praise of William Landay
...

9Mar

A
FEW YEARS AGO, I purchased a used paperback novel by a complete
unknown, a former state prosecutor in the Boston area. I can't recall
exactly what made me buy Mission
Flats. It was cheap, and I'm pretty
sure I read the back cover and thought it was worth the investment. In
any case, I was floored by the sheer quality of the writing and the
storytelling skill. The characters riveted me right off the bay, and
while I was a tad nonplussed by the big twist near the end, I recall
thinking that this was an author who deserved an audience.

I'm
pleased to note that William Landay has indeed found an
audience, a
growing one. His third novel, Defending Jacob, graces the best seller
lists. As of this writing, it holds the No. 9 spot on the New York
Times hardcover list. It has certainly generated a buzz
among reviewers
and in the blogosphere. I have not yet read the novel, but the
consensus seems to be that he has outdone himself, putting in the top
echelon of literary suspense novelists.

According to a
Seattle PIinterview, "When I finished my
first decent manuscript,
Mission Flats, I was about to give the whole thing up. It was time to
admit defeat and move on. My wife and I were about to have our first
child. It was time to get a 'real' job. In fact, when the first offer
for Mission Flats came in, my wife and I were at the obstetrician's
office to hear the unborn baby's heartbeat. We took the call on my cell
phone while we sat in the doctor's waiting room, my agent telling me
we'd received a generous offer for the book. I wound up with a two-book
deal, which, happily, required me to keep writing. And that is when I
became a writer, finally - without ever actually deciding to be one."
Interesting. The truly good writers somehow ending up being writers, in
spite of themselves in some cases.

THE
NEWS that the Justice Department's anti-trust division has
been
investigting the top publishing companies was something of a shock. But
when you think about it, it was a no-brainer sort of case for
investigators. It was no secret that the publishers were at the end of
their rope with Amazon, which was stubborn in its application of the
wholesale pricing model that left it free to sell e-books at prices
well below what it paid for them. That was a huge win for the
book-buying public, but a scary intimation of the future of publishing
for industry executives. Apple came along at just the right
time,
and signed up all the big players with its publisher friendly agency
model. That forced Amazon to change it ways.

The
big question now is whether the solution formulated by Apple and the
publishers violated anti-trust laws. Another big question of
course is what role Amazon played in the investigation. No one would be
surprised if Amazon played hardball in the wake of its bitter setback
at the hands of Steve Jobs.

All
this seems to be coming to a head. The leak to the Wall Street Journal
could easiily be construed as pressure tactic. Someone wanted to send a
message. I fully expect a settlement, as the litigation would be costly
and distracting; civil litigation is also underway. And
frankly the investigators just might have a strong case. Some
think Steve Jobs left something of a smoking gun. If the
two parties settle, it will be interesting to see what the remedies
are. I doubt we'll see a return to the days of $9.99 Amazon e-books.
But what becomes of the agency model is an open
question right now.

Welcome
to our relaunched publication

23Feb

AT LONG
LAST, we have relaunched this
site. As our work and
family schedules grew crowded, we unfortunately let the site
go dormant for several years. But in the back of our
minds, we always knew we would bring it back for our readers,
who enjoy books as much as we do. Our intention is to maintain a site
for book lovers to check daily for great tips about what to read
and who to read and other tidbits of information
about the fascinating world of books. We'll even be devling into the
wacky publishing industry as the news warrants. For the next year or
so, we'll be focusing on fiction, with more attention paid to
commercial fiction. But in the end, our tastes are pretty eclectic and
we're hoping to once again connect with a broad audience, which made
the site so much fun to operate the first time around.